Cancer treatment news megapack

[Rusakov]

Here's some recent news articles about new cancer treatments.

One drug to shrink all tumors

Targeted nanoparticles show success in clinical trials

Daily asprin "prevents and possibly treats cancer"

New treatment for prostate cancer gives "perfect results" for nine in ten men: research

"Universal" cancer vaccine developed

Researchers creating "designer lymph nodes" (more general immunology, but they're testing it on cancer patients)

Thoughts?

[Falco'sFinest]

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[DZComposer]

My thoughts are the government pushes man-made poisons while outlawing a naturally-occurring miracle drug.

Careful, your tinfoil hat is showing.

While I agree it should be legalized, I find it dubious that there would be a mass conspiracy to shut down medical marijuana because if it works so damn well, it's a potential profit center. Also, many of these studies are done on extracted THC, which is nothing like what you get from tokin' it up. Also, the reporting on some of these studies is often exaggerated. While THC, in moderation, may have some health benefits and effect certain functions, I wouldn't call it a miracle drug.

Marijuana prohibition was simply one of those "I'm going to force you to my moral standards" type laws than anything else. And then, like happened with alcohol back in the prohibition era, the gangsters took it over and that has been used as an excuse to keep it illegal.

Also, just because it is natural doesn't mean it is safe, and, conversely, just because it is artificial doesn't mean it is toxic. Black Mamba Venom is natural, and it can kill you in mere minutes, while distilled water, which IS manmade, is perfectly benign.

[Rusakov]

In addition, some of this stuff is more targeted towards treating cancer than naturally occuring chemicals.

[Falco'sFinest]

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[DZComposer]

I think you missed my overall point: There is no government conspiracy against marijuana. It's a simple lack of political will due to fears of being called "soft on crime" and loss of some political contributions from anti-legalization advocates. Popular support for it is growing, however, and I suspect the political mood about this will change in Washington. I suspect marijuana will be legalized within the next 10-20 years.

Also, marijuana is not a panacea as many medical marijuana advocates claim, and that many of the more curative aspects of THC can only be gotten by refining it, which makes it not unlike many other medications out there. My "tokin' it up" comment was an attempt to say that taking marijuana in the common way people take it recreationally will not provide the medical benefits that much of the THC research suggests is possible because you're not getting enough of it and smoke in general is a bad thing to inhale.

Also, you mentioned hemp as a fuel being a reason to call it a miracle drug. This is not an argument you want to make in the future, as it is a very weak argument. It's a logical fallacy called "non-sequitur," which means the conclusion does not follow the premises. Firstly, the cannabis plants used for hemp is not the same species commonly turned into marijuana. Yes, both plants are in the same genus and contain THC, but hemp, c. satica, has less THC than the plant commonly used for marijuana, c. indica, and is thus not as useful as a drug, recreational or otherwise.

Secondly, and this is the main part of the fallacy, any use other than medicinal use has nothing to do with a substance's effectiveness as a medicine. Recreational Marijuana hasn't cured anything. It does provide some symptom management, making it no more a cure than the pharmaceuticals some advocates want to replace.

In short, yes, hemp is a very versatile, renewable, material, but that says nothing about marijuana as a medicine. A miracle drug is one that cures diseases with no lasting side-effects. While research indicates THC may have some curative properties, in practice marijuana use really only manages symptoms, which does not make it a miracle drug.

We need to let the science happen before we start calling things miracle medicines. This even goes for artificial pharmaceuticals. You can't call something a miracle cure until the science backs it up.

Chemophobia and mistrust of corporations and government sadly often lead people to making poor choices. Sometimes people fall for quackery like homeopathy (a fancy word for water), and others for untested remedies like medical marijuana or herbal medicine. While the later two may have some chance, until science says "this will cure you," you shouldn't forgo standard medical treatment. Science is evidence-based, and is the best way to judge the effectiveness of medicines, natural or otherwise.

This doesn't mean pharmacology is perfect, or that the FDA is doing a good job regulating it. These things need review, and changes need to be made so we get safer medicines, but pharmacology has saved many, many more lives than it has taken. We hear so much more about people who die from bad drugs than we do about people who are saved by good ones.

We shouldn't base our medical feelings on emotion. All potential cures should be scientifically tested, artificial or natural. Those that work should be made available, and those that don't should be banned from being sold as medicine or supplement.

The Scientific Method is man's greatest tool. We should use it, and trust it. Why? Because the Scientific Method is the process for going " Got any proof?" and saying "Yes I do, and here it is and how I did it."

[Falco'sFinest]

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[Harlow]

I'm all for research. But does it seem that right now, literally everything can give you cancer everything can reduce the chances to contract it?

And yeah, legalize the Mary, but keep every other thing at bay. MJ's the only one with lots of pros and very few, sometimes overblown cons.

[DZComposer]

Well I think you have taken most, if not all, of my statements completely out of context for the sake of your argument. You have taken just about every statement I made and added on about 5 assumptions and insinuations that I simply did not include such as the suggestion that marijuana is cure for cancer or other illnesses. Nowhere in any of my comments did I even come close to even insinuating that.

Sadly, I've had this conversation a million times and, despite the fact that I'm always careful to keep my words meticulously in context, they are always taken out for the sake of generalizing my stance. Most of your comments are based on the assumption that I'm some hippie-advocate screaming for everyone to smoke marijuana all the time. This just isn't the case.

How does my post imply anything about people wanting to smoke marijuana all the time? I said nothing about recreational use other than the way people use it recreationally is not how people get the most benefit from the THC.

Reread my post. All of my arguments were from a medicinal or scientific standpoint.

Just because I don't buy into all of the "marijuana is a super drug" hype doesn't mean I think medical marijuana advocates are all stoners. It means I want to see proof of these properties before I accept them as truth. I said let's look at marijuana objectively like we should view any potential medicine. Research it, and see if the claims about it's medical properties are true. The scientific method REQUIRES a skeptical view of the claim.

Also, in both of my previous posts I clearly stated that I support legalization of marijuana.

So the only comment I can really substantiate with a response is the miracle drug kick....on which I think you're being pretty cavalier in your definition of "miracle". A tough plant that grows in virtually any climate and has as many potential uses as cannabis, is, imo, a miracle. It is eaiser to grow than tomatoes. The reason I chose to use the example of car fuel is because it is a use so drastically different than medical treatment.....of which btw symptom management is most certainly a part....that it offers perspective on the absurdity of outlawing it completely. Perhaps the use of the word drug is what causes this drastic difference in view? What if I just called it a miracle or a miracle substance?

I did not define "miracle," I defined "miracle drug." You supplied as evidence for calling it a "miracle drug" the use of hemp as a biofuel. I merely called you on that non-sequitur, and advised you not make that argument again due to it's weakness. If you want to call cannibids "miracle plants" due to their heartiness and versatility, that is fine. But when you call it a "miracle drug," you are implying that it will cure diseases with no side-effects. This has not been proven, and much of the current medical property of marijuana is symptom management, not cure, which leads to your next point.

I never said symptom management was a bad thing. I brought it up because I wanted to A: throw water on the "miracle drug" claim and B: preemptively cover some bases that I did not know your opinions on. Many people who throw their support behind an alternative medicine cite mere symptom management as one of their reasons to reject science-based medicine.

I am skeptical of all forms of alternative medicine because a lot of it is obvious quackery, and that that isn't hasn't been researched enough to differentiate causation from mere correlation. I'll make the same arguments about homeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, herbal remedies, magnetic thereapy, pyramid therapy, spiritual therapy, voodoo, and all the other woowoo that is out there.

Pharmacology is a mature science. It isn't perfect, but as I said earlier, modern pharmacology has saved many, many more people than it has harmed.

[Sarita]

Sorry, I know this is horribly off-topic, but all this talk of marijuana has caught the attention of the Facebook bot, and it makes me lol. ):

[Xidphel]

Which is why you're frowning...

Seems legit.

[Sarita]

Because I felt bad about being off topic! It was a complicated emotion.

Back on topic, gentlemen!